Monday, March 31, 2014

Behind the Curtain

Today,
we are going to begin a journey through the book of Job, which I intend to
write on every day until it is finished. I have had the purifying experience
lately of seeing several people who I care deeply for go through difficulty and
experience apparent separation from God. I will be writing through this for one
of them in particular, for anyone else who finds it helpful, and also to help
myself process that question which is easy to answer in our minds, but hard to
accept in our hearts: why do bad things happen to people?

I have long been in the habit of
responding to mild annoyances by saying that “worse things than this have
happened to better people than me.” It is something I still stand by, and know
to be true. It becomes no less true when the problems in our lives hit closer
home, but it does become harder to say. Job is one of the most difficult books
of the Bible, mostly because it is not at all what we think the Bible ought to
be like. There are few passages which fit our normal idea of inspiration, where
some biblical writer teaches us something, and even when God Himself speaks, He
seems to avoid the question He was asked, and answer a different one instead.
It is an ancient, epic poem, which is partially difficult to read because it
tears so honestly at the depths of the human heart. As you read through Job,
you will constantly hear the echoes of things you have felt, but have been too
afraid to say.

Let’s crack open the prologue and
set the stage for our study, Job 1:1–5 (NASB95):

There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was
Job; and that man was blameless, upright, fearing God and turning away from
evil. Seven sons and three daughters were born to him. His possessions also
were 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 female donkeys, and very
many servants; and that man was the greatest of all the men of the east. His
sons used to go and hold a feast in the house of each one on his day, and they
would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. When the
days of feasting had completed their cycle, Job would send and consecrate them,
rising up early in the morning and offering burnt offerings according to the
number of them all; for Job said, “Perhaps my sons have sinned and cursed God
in their hearts.” Thus Job did continually.

This opening is nice, because everything
is exactly the way that we expect it to be. We are introduced to a man named
Job, who is described as blameless (not without sin, but complete, always
responding to his sin with heartfelt repentance), upright (he had integrity),
fearing God (he respected and worshipped God) and turning away from evil. When
his sons had their birthday parties, he would make special offerings for them, showing
that he was concerned for them, and was entrusting them to God.

All people are theologians,
although most are bad ones, so we all have a natural assumption about how this
should turn out. When you have someone who follows after God, what do you
expect their life to look like? Almost everyone would agree that such a person
should be wealthy and successful. We don’t even need God to arrive at that kind
of a theology. An agnostic, a deist and a Buddhist can all be quite comfortable
with this kind of theology, since they can appeal to some vague kind of
balance. Even atheists, who have no mechanism for such a thing, have a vague
sense that ‘what goes around comes around.’ God, if there is one, is primarily
a cosmic accountant, moving things from one bank to another and making sure
that the sinners get their bills and the righteous get their dividends.

It is a pretty good system we have
invented, and I would be quite comfortable with it if I didn’t have a Bible and
had never met any other human beings. The theory only falls apart when
confronted with the facts. When I was a kid, I had[1]
an active imagination. I invented elaborate worlds, with very specific rules.
One the playground at Stevenson Primary School, there is an oddly round hill,
which looked to me like a gumball. A friend and I decided that if you jumped on
the hill, you could fall through into Bubble Gum World, where you could then
play. I was pretty strict about these things, and it must have driven my
teachers crazy to watch me run the wrong way when I was called in for recess.
But I had to go back to the hill so I could go back to the real world, and I
couldn’t really understand why that didn’t make sense to them. My ideas about
the world were consistent and they worked for me. The problem is that they
weren’t true. I think a lot of people’s ideas about God are like that. They
seem to make sense, you can follow through with them and be pretty happy, but
they’re still wrong.

The world is just more complicated
than the 8 year old Justin thought. If you study the Bible, you will quickly
become confronted with the idea that there is literally more going on than you
can see. Behind our world, but still very close, is an invisible spiritual
realm, where the work of God is taking place. Ordinarily, we can’t see it, and
so it seems half-real to the people who acknowledge it at all. But this is
where the real action is, and in Job 1, God gives us a peak. Job 1:6–8
(NASB95):

Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present
themselves before the Lord, and
Satan also came among them. The Lord
said to Satan, “From where do you come?” Then Satan answered the Lord and said, “From roaming about on
the earth and walking around on it.” The
Lord said to Satan, “Have you
considered My servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a
blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil.”

The angels have gathered around God
to report their progress. In their midst is the Satan – the Accuser. God calls
out to him and asks what he has been doing, and he reports that he has been wandering
around on the earth, obviously looking for people to attack in their weakness. Take
a minute to imagine this and consider the implications. A sea of angels
gathered around the throne of God, and God’s voice calls out to the one who
wants to oppose Him: What are you doing? Satan has no choice but to answer
honestly, because God already knows. Satan is not some equal god, wrecking
people’s lives while Jesus wrings His hands. He is someone who has some
authority for a time, but is ultimately under God’s control.

God issues a challenge to Satan. “You’ve
been tempting people? Have you tried my servant Job? There is no one like him.”
Wouldn’t it be something to think that God could be talking about you like
that? “Oh Satan, I know you want to tempt people, but you don’t stand a chance
against my servant Justin. He is blameless and hates evil. There is no one like
him in the world.”[2]
God throws down the gauntlet and issues the challenge – always in control. Job
1:9–12 (NASB95)

Then Satan answered the Lord,
“Does Job fear God for nothing? Have You not made a hedge about him and his
house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his
hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But put forth Your hand
now and touch all that he has; he will surely curse You to Your face.” Then the Lord
said to Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your power, only do not put forth
your hand on him.” So Satan departed from the presence of the Lord.

The way
Satan responds to God’s challenge is incredible. Satan, like many of us,
operates under the fascinating assumption that everyone is just like him. What is
tempting to him will be tempting to everyone. What is not, will not be. His
mentality (the pattern of this world, to quote Romans 12) is very simple: me
first. His entire strategy is based on the assumption that you will do whatever
it takes to get what you want, and if you behave well, it is only because you
are looking for something good from it. When you watch TV and a commercial
tells you about what you deserve or what you are worth, this is the mentality
being appealed to. Sometimes well-meaning people will tempt you with the same
kind of reasoning: “It will be okay, you’ve really earned this. You’ve had a
hard week and you do so much; just go ahead.” Satan assumes that if Job is
following God, it must be because of the things God gives him. So God gives
Satan permission to attack everything Job has, but he cannot hurt Job directly.
God is still in control, but He has authorized Satan to let Job suffer.

This
does not fit into our karma god. Job has done nothing wrong, but God is letting
Job be tested, apparently on a whim. How does this make sense? Consider what Oswald
Chambers once wrote: “Suffering is the heritage of the bad, of the penitent and
of the Son of God. Each one ends in the cross. The bad thief is crucified, the
penitent thief is crucified, and the Son of God is crucified. By these signs we
know the widespread heritage of suffering.”[3]

The world we live in, though under
God’s dominion, is fundamentally broken. Suffering is the lot of every person,
and this stems from sin. But, that is too simple. When you suffer and do not
know why (or when someone else does not suffer and you do not know why), you
are faced with a terrifying fact: God is alive. When you do not feel God’s
presence when you cry out to Him, it is the same striking testimony: God is
alive. He is not a force that is manipulated and controlled at your whim, like
the laws of physics. He is sovereign and behaves as He sees fit, and a
relationship with Him will eventually come crashing into that fact. Sometimes
He goes against our expectations to teach us that. Sometimes we do not
understand all of the complexities of the situation, but the God revealed in
our text today is not the God we expected

He is allowing Satan to harm
someone who is following Him closely, for reasons that seem foggy at best. But
if we will all suffer, we can take a deep breath and know God chooses to
sovereignly place it where He knows is best. This may seem like precious little
comfort when we are suffering (and even less when those we love are), but it is
still the truth. God is God, and He uses suffering the way that He sees fit,
for purposes which are beyond us.

As we wrestle through this book, we
will not find many answers fit for a poster or a bumper sticker. They are
probably not very satisfying either, but they are amazing. But as you read
through the book of Job, the first lesson I think we see is that God is alive.
He doesn’t act the way we expect, which is at once terrifying and comforting.
He is bigger and burns brighter than our expectations. We came expecting an
accountant, and found a CEO. Where we expected a judge, there was a King.

Come back tomorrow for the rest of
the first chapter and all of the second as we finish the prologue, and make
sure to check back every day for the journey through this exciting book. It is
my heartfelt prayer that we do not just encounter a story or find answers, but
that we come into contact with God Himself.

[1] Notice
the past tense. Because I never imagine that large buildings are spaceships
now. That would be dorky.